Way Out West Festival 2010

[Gothenburg, Sweden; 08/12-08/14/10]

Saturday, August 14

The Radio Dept. [4:30 p.m.; Linne Stage]

A girl standing in front of me in the packed Linné tent had a tote bag with the sentence "I will not make any more boring art" written on it over and over again. Gotta admit, I really, really wanted to rip it off her shoulder and throw it on stage. Despite playing for an adoring home-country crowd, the clean-cut Radio Dept. displayed little enthusiasm, going through the motions like it was just another day on the job. In a big, outdoor festival environment, the seductive shoegaze sheen of tracks like "1995", "Heaven's on Fire", and "The Worst Taste in Music" was lost. I enjoy the Radio Dept.'s shimmering indie pop on record, but here, they didn't do it justice. --Amy Phillips

Even before Jay Electronica's 11th-hour cancellation, there wasn't much rap scheduled for Way Out West. So it's a bit of a shame that one of the genre's few representatives had to be something as bloodless and Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek's festival act. On record, especially 2000's Train of Thought, Reflection Eternal's warm, analog thump works nicely as true-school comfort food. But onstage in the middle of the day, they offer absolutely nothing in the way of energy or spontaneity. It's not that Kweli's a bad live rapper; he's strong and precise enough that he doesn't have, or need, a hypeman. But pacing the gigantic Azalea Stage, he looks small and insignificant, bringing none of the presence you need to rock a crowd of this size. (And no, playing a snippet of Bob Marley's "Jammin'" does not count as showmanship.) Compared to the previous day's randomly assembled Wu-Tang lineup, Kweli and Hi-Tek are infinitely more polished, and less vital. When you put a show as low-key as theirs on a stage as big as the Azalea, things get boring fast. --Tom Breihan

"Some of you in the front know who we are," Stephen Malkmus joked after the opening one-two punch of "In the Mouth a Desert" and "Date w/ Ikea". "We're an American band from the 90s." I never dreamed I'd see a Pavement show in which the band was more into it than the audience. Then again, I never dreamed I'd see a Pavement show in Gothenburg, Sweden. Malkmus also compared Pavement to veteran Swedish indie band Bob Hund, which elicited cheers from the crowd. I imagine Pavement playing a festival in Gothenburg probably went over as well as Bob Hund would playing a festival in Chicago.

Playing for a half-full crowd in the middle of the day and billed below the National, the xx, LCD Soundsystem, and others on the festival poster, Pavement were clearly not a big deal at Way Out West. The audience perked up a bit for "Gold Soundz", "Cut Your Hair", "Shady Lane", and Bob Nastanovich's part on "Conduit for Sale!", but mostly watched quietly and respectfully. Hell, fucking Beach House made people more excited.

Thank god the band didn't seem to care, though. They rocked out like a bunch of old friends having the time of their lives, with more energy than their headlining slot at the Pitchfork Music Festival. My American cultural imperialist self looked around incredulously: How can you people just stand there checking your phones while Pavement is playing "Here" and "Stop Breathin'" and "Range Life" and "Trigger Cut"?! But as Morrissey would say, America is not the world. --Amy Phillips

One of the most stunning moments that I witnessed at Way Out West occurred during Konono No. 1's set. The Congolese band had drawn a small crowd with their hypnotic groove fueled by likembes (electric thumb pianos), but for the first 20 minutes, few folks seemed particularly into it. Suddenly, completely spontaneously and out of the blue, a conga line erupted. It snaked through the crowd gaining more and more people, until it was at least a hundred strong. Then it was on: total dance party. The music was serving its ultimate purpose: getting bodies moving, bringing strangers together.

Unbelievably, Konono No. 1 played for 40 straight minutes without coming up for air. Then they briefly stopped and kept going for 10 more. Bandleader Augustin Mingiedi and one other man played likembes, two men played percussion, and Pauline Mbuka Nsialawoman sang, played cowbells, and danced, jerking her hips in ways I did not know were humanly possible. The whole thing was a feat of physical endurance that left me satisfyingly exhausted just from watching. --Amy Phillips

Håkan Hellström [7:55 p.m.; Flamingo Stage]

On the Way Out West poster, Håkan Hellström is the name in the second-biggest font size, after M.I.A. But talking to people at Way Out West, it quickly becomes apparent that Hellström, a singer from Gothenburg, is far and away the biggest draw of the whole festival. Hellström is a skinny mid-thirties guy with shaggy hair who sings pretty much exclusively in Swedish, and he and his band wear perfectly ridiculous sailor suits. And in Sweden-- especially in Gothenburg-- Hellström is the man. He only steps onstage after running along the barricade and high-fiving fans, at least a few of whom are dressed exactly like him. On the Jumbotron screen, girls cry. As soon as the first song starts, the entire crowd drowns out Hellström's voice immediately. The wave of rapture that comes over the crowd during Hellström's set is sort of like the reception Jay-Z gets in New York, only somehow more so. In the crowd, one guy near me tells me that if Sweden had to pick a new national anthem, they'd pick one of Hellström's songs. Another guy tries to convince me to hoist him up on my shoulders, then expresses total bewilderment when I tell him I've never heard of Hellström. "This is like the Swedish Johnny Cash," he tells me.

I think he means that culturally rather than musically, since it's hard to imagine a human being sounding less like Johnny Cash musically. This show is a special one for Hellström; he's playing his 2000 album Känn Ingen Sorg För Mig Göteborg in full. It's his first album and, I'm repeatedly assured, his best. Hellström plays big, unapologetically hammy, swinging-for-fences pop songs with enormous choruses full of words I can't understand. But it's not like he trades exclusively in power ballads, though there are plenty of those. There's also a whole lot of what I guess you'd call cruise-ship soca: rippling bongos, tootling horns, general silliness. It occurs to me that when Gothenburg groups like Air France and jj make their mutant Balearic pop, this is the actual big-tent pop music they're mutating.

As for the sailor suit, I still have no idea what the hell is going on. Here's one girl's explanation: "The two main components of Swedish pop are structure and sailors." OK then! --Tom Breihan

Lykke Li is one of the sexiest creatures on the face of the earth. Or at least tonight she was, resplendent with cascading brown hair, a flowing black skirt chopped up to reveal short shorts, and sky-high heels. She looked like a prom queen, sang like a schoolgirl, and danced like a stripper. She blew a whistle, she banged drums, she writhed on the floor. All of which added up to one irresistible pop package, easily seducing us with singles like "Dance Dance Dance", "Little Bit", and "I'm Good I'm Gone". ("Possibility", Lykke Li's so-so contribution to the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack, received huge applause. Guess Twilight-mania is a global thing.)

But Lykke Li is also human, which makes her even sexier. Halfway through a lackluster take on the heartbreaking ballad "Tonight" in which her voice wavered out of tune, Lykke shut the song down, declaring, "This shit is not working out." But everything else most definitely did work out. She did snippets of covers of the Fugees' "Ready or Not" and the Big Pink's "Velvet", and danced to the intro to the Knife's "Silent Shout". She also performed several new songs, including a standout featuring the anthemic chorus "Silence is the best thing/ Silence is the worst/ Silence is my boyfriend/ Oh silence, I'm your girl."UPDATE: The song is called "Sadness Is a Blessing" and the chorus is actually "Sadness is a blessing/ Sadness is a pearl/ Sadness is my boyfriend/ Oh sadness, I'm your girl." I'm still singing it to myself hours later. --Amy Phillips

After all the larger-than-life personalities on display this weekend, it might seem like an odd choice for the Chemical Brothers, two nondescript guys sitting in a gigantic cockpit full of gadgetry, to close out the main stage on the final day. That's until you see, and hear, exactly what all those doohickeys can do. This is my first time seeing the Chems, and I have to say: Holy fucking shit. For sheer arena-dance spectacle, their show doesn't quite equal the untouchable Daft Punk pyramid tour of a few years back, but it comes way closer than I've ever seen anyone come.

They don't really do much to engage the crowd, exactly-- Ed Simons steps out from behind the controls to wave for the crowd to jump more, and they both come out to charmingly bow and high-five each other at the end of the set. But their light show is a thing of breathtaking and overwhelming beauty; the crowd actually collectively oohs the first time the green laser cannons announce their presence. And the music itself is everything you could possibly want from one of these shows-- a series of drawn out builds and peaks that touches on every period of the group's history and weaves it into a seamless whole. The melodic, psyched-out stuff from the duo's new album Further-- their best in a decade-- sounds gorgeous, and Exit Planet Dust oldies "Leave Home" and "Chemical Beats" still kick as hard as they ever did. And some of those builds just go on way longer than anyone expects, the ascending synth sounds turning into blaring whistles before the beat finally, gloriously, kicks in.

This being a European festival, the crowd, naturally goes buckshit. On their Twitter, the Chems said that this was their first Swedish gig since 1999, but you wouldn't know it from this mob. The crowd chants along with the samples on "Hey Boy Hey Girl", leaps into the air whenever a new beat drops, and just generally stays nuts for the set's entire hour and a half running time. Around the stage, grass turns to mud as people trample it hard, and nobody runs for more solid ground. --Tom Breihan

La Roux [11 p.m.; Linne Stage]

La Roux's Elly Jackson is the photonegative of Lykke Li: steely androgyny vs. flowing femininity. But they're both ultimate pros at what they do, making these two one right after the other a pretty sweet way to end a festival. The Linné tent was the most crowded I'd seen it throughout the festival, full of kids stoked to dance and sing along. La Roux are huge stars in Europe and are on their way to becoming the same in the States. (I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that "Bulletproof" went top 10 over here.) Their stage setup featured a backdrop of Jackson's face painted gold. Which is all pretty amazing considering the fact that Jackson is a skinny, awkward girl who dresses and dances like a man from a new wave video circa 1982. Not exactly conventional pop star material in 2010. Her hair also seems to get more and more comical; tonight its gel-encrusted peak looked like it stood a foot high.

The dinky synths and stone-age drum machine beats of La Roux's debut album sounded significantly brawnier played by two keyboardists and a dude batting away at an electronic drum set. People went apeshit for "Quicksand", "In For the Kill", and, of course, "Bulletproof", as Jackson goaded everybody on by continually pointing the microphone at the crowd. I actually don't think I heard her sing the word "Bulletproof" once. It's kind of hard to sing along with La Roux, though, as Jackson's helium voice is probably out of the hearing range of most dogs. They also delivered a surprisingly effective synth-pop cover of the Rolling Stones' notoriously sexist "Under My Thumb", which takes on a whole new meaning when sung by a woman who obscures her sexuality so completely. I really hope Jackson doesn't start becoming more girlie as her fame grows. Pop needs all the oddballs it can get. --Amy Phillips

Die Antwoord [1:30 a.m.; Park Lane]

Ever since Die Antwoord emerged from some mysterious internet vortex early this year, people have been trying to figure out if they're joking or not. My definitive answer, after seeing them tonight: Who cares? The anarchic South African rave-rap group is funny, and they know they're funny, but novelty acts don't usually put that much energy and focus into their craft. If you're getting yourself covered in ridiculous tattoos as a joke, it's sort of not a joke anymore. At Park Lane, Ninja doesn't once smile onstage. He averages at least one stage-dive per song. In a club hot enough to steam up glasses, Yo-Landi Vi$$er comes out to do "Rich Bitch" in a gold, shiny, fur-collared parka-- with the hood up. The DJ never takes off his insanely ugly rubber mask, and when they come out for an encore, everyone wears full-body Pokemon costumes. Throughout their surprisingly long set, Die Antwoord never stop moving. And when you compare their set with, say, Reflection Eternal-- the other rap group at Way Out West today with a DJ named Hi-Tek-- the difference jumps right at you. Die Antwoord aren't running through a show they've done a million times before. They're practically bleeding out there.

And it's working. At Park Lane, the line to get in runs down the block, and most of the people waiting won't make it in. Down on the ridiculously crowded sunken dancefloor, the audience rages right along with the group, pogoing hard throughout. People know the songs that don't even have fascinating viral videos attached to them yet. I meet a girl who has her own version of Ninja's "pretty wise" neck tattoo, and I'm afraid to ask her if it's real or drawn-on. And even if Die Antwoord's fired-up cell-phone beats sound cheap or dinky on your computer speakers, they're catchy as all hell, and they hit hard live. It's easy to imagine Die Antwoord disappearing forever after another month or so, and it's just as easy to imagine them blowing up gigantic. It'll be fascinating to see what happens. --Tom Breihan